hi new to this fourm, but i'm pratice black and Ceremonial Magick but am verry intrested in chaos magick. so any help is welcome.

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Cosmic consciousness is devoid of diversity; yet the universe of diversity exists in notion....We contemplate that reality in which everything exists, to which everything belongs,from which everything has emerged, which is the cause of everything and which is everything....The light of [this] self-knowledge alone illumines all experiences. It shines by its own light.This inner light appears to be outside and to illumine external objects.

The quickest way to learn anything new is to start reading around and Google for particular aspects to top up your learning. Then a great way to explore that is on the discussion boards here and elsewhere.

Talking about your interests with others clarifies things and also is a good way to clear up little questions.

IS there a particular way you have to pull of the ritual. Like, do you have to have anything particular (candels, stones, etc.) in order to preform a spell, parsay?

bell and incenses some times candels.

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Cosmic consciousness is devoid of diversity; yet the universe of diversity exists in notion....We contemplate that reality in which everything exists, to which everything belongs,from which everything has emerged, which is the cause of everything and which is everything....The light of [this] self-knowledge alone illumines all experiences. It shines by its own light.This inner light appears to be outside and to illumine external objects.

This does illustrate an important aspect of Chaos Magick practice. There is no right or wrong way to carry out a ritual. The non-dogmatic approach of chaos magick allows for the individual to diverge from the standard way of performing a banishing ritual (for example).

O.K. I'm back, after reading three or four essays on the topic and looking at the web sites that mediocracy suggested and now I'm confused. It seems that the definition of chaos magick ranges from an advanced form of social engineering to the more “magick” where the user channels and changes energy. The only thing that is consistent in all is the idea things are not set in stone. So the lengthy intro out of the way my question is this: Is chaos magick set with rules that govern the way “it” all works, or is it as I think and chaos magick is any thing that uses chaos and chaotic activity to the users goal regardless of the way it is preformed?

P.S why is this post marked as "Important Topics"?

This post has been edited by fatherjhon: Jun 7 2005, 09:55 PM

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Cosmic consciousness is devoid of diversity; yet the universe of diversity exists in notion....We contemplate that reality in which everything exists, to which everything belongs,from which everything has emerged, which is the cause of everything and which is everything....The light of [this] self-knowledge alone illumines all experiences. It shines by its own light.This inner light appears to be outside and to illumine external objects.

That is why I said it is easier to say what chaos magick is not, rather than try and define what it is.

Peter Carroll does put forward a pseudo-scientific theory of magick working along the lines of chaos theory etc, but you can take that or leave it as you wish. I think it was a trendy idea at the time that looks a bit silly now (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Don't expect any rules in chaos magick, and don't expect any two chaotes to agree on much. This is why there is a cross over with the Discordian and Sub-Genius movements, as well as Anarchist politics and Slack.

As this is basically a 'what is chaos magick' thread I have decided to pin it at the top of the forum as it will act as a useful reference for others new to chaos magick.

Hi there.I have been 'into' Chaos magick for a while now, and from my understanding of the subject, it appears to be a stripping down of general magickal traditions to their elemental principals, and then superimposing one's own ideas, archetypes and what have you on top of these, thereby creating a method which is personal, and free from unnecessary clutter which might otherwise compromise effectiveness in any given working.This gives a more complete understanding of one's own methods, which can be expanded and modified in the light of progress.For example, you may find that Alice in Wonderland has more to it than many people would generally give it credit for, and decide to superimpose the characters of this book upon a framework developed by another system. So Tweedle dee and Tweedle Dum could take on the role of the dualistic principle, constantly in conflict, but essentially two sides of the same coin. The Mad Hatter could equate to Choronzon and so on.....Or, you could go down the Austin Spare route, and create sigils expressive of a desire, and fire it directly into the subconscious without any fancy rituals or trappings.You could even adapt your present methods to incorporate techniques of Spare's, like many others do. Some Witches cast sigils, as do some Cabbalists. Some Chaos magicians will do a Wiccan ritual one day, and the next do something completely personal, or Santerian or whatever, the next.Some systems however, as I'm sure you're already aware, are completely different than others and therefore incompatible with one another, so it may be advantageous to stick with one or another at first, until you decide to change your mind which for me, is one of the beauties of the Chaos thing. I don't have to stick rigidly to any one idea.Once the basic principles are understood, it generally doesn't matter what we dress them up in, as long as it works.It's taken me ages to understand what Chaos is about, as I was so used to tried and tested rigid structures, with strict guidelines as to procedures, and symbols.These are OK, but there are freeform methods available which give more flexibility. A lot can be learned watching children at play, I reckon, as they become totally absorbed in what they do, and believe in it for the time being.The main thing I discovered was that I didn't need to become a Chaos magician, because I already was one.Loads of people will probably disagree with what I've written above but hey...., I'm learning too and I can always change my mind if I want to.Hope this is relevant/helpful.Steve.

Hi there.I have been 'into' Chaos magick for a while now, and from my understanding of the subject, it appears to be a stripping down of general magickal traditions to their elemental principals, and then superimposing one's own ideas, archetypes and what have you on top of these, thereby creating a method which is personal, and free from unnecessary clutter which might otherwise compromise effectiveness in any given working.This gives a more complete understanding of one's own methods, which can be expanded and modified in the light of progress.For example, you may find that Alice in Wonderland has more to it than many people would generally give it credit for, and decide to superimpose the characters of this book upon a framework developed by another system. So Tweedle dee and Tweedle Dum could take on the role of the dualistic principle, constantly in conflict, but essentially two sides of the same coin. The Mad Hatter could equate to Choronzon and so on.....Or, you could go down the Austin Spare route, and create sigils expressive of a desire, and fire it directly into the subconscious without any fancy rituals or trappings.You could even adapt your present methods to incorporate techniques of Spare's, like many others do. Some Witches cast sigils, as do some Cabbalists. Some Chaos magicians will do a Wiccan ritual one day, and the next do something completely personal, or Santerian or whatever, the next.Some systems however, as I'm sure you're already aware, are completely different than others and therefore incompatible with one another, so it may be advantageous to stick with one or another at first, until you decide to change your mind which for me, is one of the beauties of the Chaos thing. I don't have to stick rigidly to any one idea.Once the basic principles are understood, it generally doesn't matter what we dress them up in, as long as it works.It's taken me ages to understand what Chaos is about, as I was so used to tried and tested rigid structures, with strict guidelines as to procedures, and symbols.These are OK, but there are freeform methods available which give more flexibility. A lot can be learned watching children at play, I reckon, as they become totally absorbed in what they do, and believe in it for the time being.The main thing I discovered was that I didn't need to become a Chaos magician, because I already was one.Loads of people will probably disagree with what I've written above but hey...., I'm learning too and I can always change my mind if I want to.Hope this is relevant/helpful.Steve.

i like where your ideas are coming fromchaos magick to me is bending your own realityshaping your mind to further shape your worldto what you see fit

As I've said, chaos magic is a pragmatic theory. You take on a belief and use it, and then discard it for something else when you need that. Honestly, from what I've seen on forums, the best magical practicioners are Chaos Magicians. They have the least dogmatic belief, the most energy and creativity, and they generally look at magic as a means to an end. All magicians believe this but they won't admit to it: going towards the light, perfecting their selves, attacking their enemies, healing their friends, making money, experiencing enjoyable states of consciousness; that's what it's all about.

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You enter into the gibbering madness, the attack of alien forces so bizarre and profane that it stains your soul, and you exit into the next world a stronger man.

“I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.”“Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.”-Aleister Crowley

It is a collection of potential contradiction. This is basically what you get when you deconstruct the form to draw out the function. Not only will different authors disagree with each other on what parts are form, but also on how (and why/when) to implement as functions.

Don't fall into the trap of not valueing any form / traditional practice . . . any more then falling into its opposite, being the overly formalized.(formalized isn't bad or even less effective . . . its just not as congruent with the psyche of many modern mages.)

Look for the functions, look how the functions are recommeded to be brought into a practice. Patience!!! Practice!!

Niether Pete or Phil, Dukes or Fries . . . or even my preferrence, Mace, is THE ONE to simply follow.

Sorting out contradiction, and creating a coherency of practice and power from the appearing discoordinance is a large part of what make Chaos practice powerful . . . and possible what makes it powerfully "chaos".

though, In honesty . . . the same is often true for more traditional systems, like Western Ceremonial. The beneficence there is that the student is encouraged to learn and practice only a SINGLE style/paradigm. The developing chaos wizard is usually pressed to entertain either multiple systemic methods simultaniously or to anchor on none but to create thier entire system from scratch. Either way, it really about the same as traditional practice, only you have to notice the minutia more as a chaote.

Chaos is ultimately CREATIVE magick. Of course all magick is creative will, but Chaos is built around the idea that the self is the ultimate reality and power (very much based on Tibetan Buddhist ideas). Therefore, any name, any ritual, any device, any intention, any sigil, any servitor, anything is real, can be manifested as real, and ultimately is empowered by you. The Chaos Magickian puts on a new set of clothes every day, by way of metaphor. So, book learning is fun and useful and even helpful, but ultimately in Chaos you go it alone. And the reason it changes almost daily is that YOU change daily. That's the goal of magick,anyway, change under will. In the end, Chaos is the most fun, challenging and most rewarding, but it requires the ultimate stripping down of preconceived notions, down to the vitally naked magickian. Once that happens, any ritual, any form, any sigil works. Servitors are another vital aspect of Choas, because you're creating an entity. Chaos is not destruction, it is creation. Chaos isn't, as some have suggested, deconstruction. It's ultimately construction. Imagined construction. Imagined creative impulse. This is what makes it powerful. It's also why it can't really be learned from books or website at all. It comes from you.

Personally I don't think chaos is so much of a magick system. But more of a magick & life philosophy. Allowing one to change the beliefs & perceptions of reality at will. Letting the practitioner use & combine any magick system the way they chose to achieve the results that they desire.

The things is it really doesnt matter if the spiritual aspects to religious/magick systems are true or not gods, angels, archangels etc. it is the outcome that matters and as we can see, somesort of high awakening occurs which could never occur from anything physical. chaos magick uses this idea to its advantage and forms the idea that it is the imagination and creativity that is the trigger giving the magician the chance to play with his imagination and use non-traditional methods.

user 0 do you think you chose alice in wonderland sub conciously becuase peter carrol wrote about chaos magick and then linked it to Lewis Carrol

Hands-On Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation through the Ovayki Current by Andrieh Vitimus

Interesting. I have attended multiple lectures and rituals hosted by Andrieh Vitimus. From personal experience, I can vouch for his ability. Admittedly, I have not read his book; the last time I saw it, I passed it up to buy a hard copy of Liber Null & Psychonaut.

I wasn't sure how popular Mr. Vitimus was, but it is interesting to hear him brought up.

As I've said, chaos magic is a pragmatic theory. You take on a belief and use it, and then discard it for something else when you need that. Honestly, from what I've seen on forums, the best magical practicioners are Chaos Magicians. They have the least dogmatic belief, the most energy and creativity, and they generally look at magic as a means to an end. All magicians believe this but they won't admit to it: going towards the light, perfecting their selves, attacking their enemies, healing their friends, making money, experiencing enjoyable states of consciousness; that's what it's all about.

I like the above comment the best to describe Chaos magick theory. This is how I see it.

"Nothing is true; everything is permitted" is the motto of chaos magic theory (CMT). You will repeatedly read that the 11th century ascetic Islamic fundamentalist Hassan ibn Sabbah, who purportedly was a mystic and mastermind of an assassin squad, said it right before he bit the dust at age 90 years. This isn't true although you can read a great article about that man at www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/article/id1562/pg1/ The phrase, as it stands as a Chaos Magic slogan, was actually penned and launched as legend by the 20th century beat poet and career drug-addict William S. Burroughs, in whom a romanticist fascination with Sabbah developed. It may have been the corruption of a phrase for which subtle variations could be found in certain theological Islamic texts that sought to identify what was authentic and permissible (halal), spiritually speaking, and what was not (haram). In that context, the original sense might have been similar to that of the adage attributed to Christ: It is not what goes into a man that makes him unclean, but what comes out. That is, it referred to understanding the spirit of the law rather than merely following the letter of it and implied that if a person truly understood the spirit, perhaps he didn't have to bother with observances and rules. Some critics of Chaos Magic might regard it as an anarchist war cry that is perhaps tinged with hedonism of a kind more crass than the generally misconstrued Thelemite motto expectorated by the notorious Victorian-era sorcerer Aleister Crowley: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." From what I can gather from reading Sherwin, Carroll, Fries, Frater U.D., and less celebrated commentators, and in my own view, in modern parlance the motto Nothing is true; everything is permitted, is -- at least in part -- simply an affirmation that all belief is provisional, not absolute. (Stay with me through the next convoluted sentence. Okay?) Because belief shapes perception, which modifies circumstance, perhaps circumstance can be volitionally modified if belief that modifies perception is deliberately fabricated rather than imposed as unquestioned convention. This is magical Will and I believe it is the mechanism of magic and the gist of Chaos Magic. Before becoming interested in Western Occultism, I was involved in Eastern spirituality (for at least 25 years). What you learn when practicing esoteric Tantric meditations -- if your teacher is kind and grounded enough to tell you -- is that one of the reasons why a person meditates is to ease the burden of content in the "subconscious mind." It is the place where your habits and conditioning -- the mechanisms of the automaton-self, as well as your neuroses -- live. This is why "positive thinking," visualization, and all that nice fluffy, happy-pill stuff ultimately does not "work" for very many people. It is because a person is a preconditioned program (programmed by circumstance and experience/nature and nurture). Some folks have a great, self-affirmative, light and lively program going on; most do not, and they struggle. True Will is what you can exert if you can figure out how to reprogram yourself though transformation of consciousness -- especially subconsciousness. In meditation-speak, this is to become truly conscious and volitional (ie, to really have "free will" rather than reactivity and compulsion). Catharsis of consciousness is not as emphasized in magic as it is in Eastern meditational practices, but is in a way in Chaos Magic. Indeed, practices are described in Liber Null that are not only similar to but, frankly, are virtually plagerized from modern manuals on basic Tantric yoga techniques--and I'm not even referring to the sexy stuff. Transformation of consciousness and the acknowledgement of the role of non-conscious mindstuff (particularly in the theory behind sigil work) play a big role in Chaos Magic. Technique in Chaos Magic (as in yogic disciplines) is regarded as a tool that is to be used as needed and then discarded when its run its course and done its thing. It is like a boat that takes you on a one-way trip across a river. The polite thing to do is to leave the boat there for someone else's convenience. Odd, perhaps primitive (ie, atavistic) techniques have to be used to bypass the conscious mind and intentionally modify the subconscious one. It is a world of ritual and symbol and altered states. Shamanic/Tantric templates often come into play. In both religion and occultism, this has taken the form of believing that a human/natural world must communicate with a spiritual world through symbolic language and activity. But what if, in the 21st century, a person decides that that "spiritual world" is not "out there," but is a mass of archetypes and static within one's own mind? The protocols and attitudes may then change and the structures and intricate esoterica of what had previously been the norm may be looked upon with suspicion or even irrelevancy. It might seem chaotic, but it also might be an acceding to acknowledgment of what's really going on in magical thinking and why persons persist in placing value in it. And then there's the "purpose" issue. Why follow an ideology or practice, especially a magical mummeriferous one if "nothing is true, everything is permitted"? I'm guessing that Chaotes mostly do it for sheer experimentation and pure experience. We also call ourselves Psychonauts, don't we? In describing the whys and wherefores, I'd like to use a pithy quote uttered by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page in a clip of an interview that appears in the video The Song Remains the Same. When Plant and Page were asked what their message was and why they were doing the Led-Zeppelin thing, Plant robustly and Page demurely both made a slight scoffing sound before uttering in unison, "For fun!"

I also recommend reading the usual tracts by Peter Carroll. I like the writings of Phil Hines better. Fries technically is not a Chaote but his work is very good and valued by chaote practitioners. I especially like the writings of a guy named Mark Defrates who was writing under the name Marik back in the 80s. You can find his work on the Web. Indeed, he let me edit and post some of his work on my own Web site. Google his name or "Sigils, Servitors, and Godforms" to read Mark's quintessential piece on Chaos magic.

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Leaving aside those principles of magic that play on the superstitious and that, whatever they be, are unworthy of the general public, we will direct our thoughts only to those things that contribute to wisdom and that can satisfy better minds . . . -from De Magia by Giordano Bruno (born 1548; burned at the stake February 16, 1600).My Webpage